Today’s session brought indexes in Asia and the Pacific region, the strongest decrease their day for the past eight months, but ended the week with a painful decline in most markets in the region. Stood at the head Japanese, Chinese and South Korean securities market, which lost between 4% and 6% of its market capitalization over the past five trading sessions. Reason for mass sales became the news of the failure of the Dubai government investment holding company Dubai World to meet its obligations to creditors. The Fund has a debt for 59 billion dollars, equivalent to most of Dubai’s foreign debt to 80 billion dollars. Meanwhile, the Japanese yen rose to its highest rate against the dollar since 1995. Financial difficulties of the Dubai World stocks fell on banks and insurers in the region, led by HSBC Holdings, whose shares fell nearly 8 percent. This is due to investor concerns about exposure of large international banks to fund Dubai. Construction companies also suffered because of the activity of the Dubai World in the construction sector. The regional index MSCI Asia Pacific, which brings together companies from stock markets in ten Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand, slid 3.2 percent to 113.78 points. This is the strongest decrease in the stock measure within one day of 30 March so far. Financial companies in its composition have contributed most to the sharp drop in MSCI Asia Pacific. The good news that unemployment in Japan fell for the third consecutive month in October, while consumer spending increased household failed to stop reductions in the indexes. Thus MSCI Asia Pacific to cut their lead to five-year bottom of 9 March to 61 percent. For the past five trading sessions the index fell by 2,7 percent.
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